Edgecrusher and Mif, perhaps you haven't explained it well enough in a way that actually convinces people, then? There is no need to sound condescending towards me because I'm not as familiar with GW2 or sold on it, yet.

Originally Posted by zito

All gear will have the same stats, the only thing you want from gear will be the actual looks of it.

I see. Thanks for enlightening me. Not too fond of that, though.

You are implying that better stats on gear will make your character better, which is just not true, its the stats that are. If you want to invest time in your character then you can, by practicing your toon, learning how to play better, be more responsive to situations, learn your profession inside and out, and just becoming better at playing. Stats give you a false sense of accomplishment.

How is it not true? Your character is inseparable from your gear, otherwise what is the point of even wearing gear. I get the idea of mastering a profession, but with 6(?) active skills this seems relatively straightforward, wouldn't you agree? Besides, guides for rotations and such will obviously start appearing after a while. I spend time learning my classes in WoW as well, but I did so while performing tasks that felt meaningful to my character, i.e. improving gear, unlocking story, earning titles and achivements or simply ePeen. If anything, I would say appearance alone gives you a false sense of accomplishment--how could they not, they are only pixels--while watching your character gradually improve to become better in relation to the game world and the player community around you really reflects your hard work.

You are implying that GW2 will just hand you gear on a silver platter. It won't. Just because there isn't raiding does not mean everything will be easy. The first 8 new dungeons take longer then most raids in WoW do. Not to mention there are quite a few combinations of different encounters/paths you can take in each and every dungeon. Completing this will give that sense of accomplishment because it was time consuming and hard and hey you got a cool looking piece of gear that won't imbalance the game (like wow and rift does). Now why do you need inflating stats on gear again? To make you feel like you worked for it?

¨

No, I worry that GW2 won't hand me gear at all. Obviously it will, but like you say all gear appear to be the same, looks apart. Imagine WoW with only transmogrification and no stats, what a disaster.

I do look forward to these dungeons. As none of us (I believe) have played through them yet, it is still hard to say if the concept is awesome or swings a miss, but trying it out will certainly be nice.

Not to mention there are dynamic events that the whole world can join in on and the boss will scale depending on how many players are present. Not to mention they have some type of mechanic you have to get around on (Giant bone walls you have to break down but first you have to repair the cannons to shoot them down so you can continue to kill the boss).

Dynamic events also seem very exciting. I remember Halaa in Nagrand, and what fun it was to fight over its ownership.
Boss fights I'll stay undecided on until it's been thoroughly put to the test after release. It could be an awesome innovation which allows for both group work and a sense of individual accomplishment, or it could end up the lamest thing in the world where, as long as a few people are assigned to click this and that, everyone else can just zerg without thought or skill.

You can't really compare MMO's to FPS, people stick to their genre's because they like it for countless of reasons.

Yes, we can. Both positively and negatively. Video games of every genre use similar reward-structures.

Originally Posted by zito

"Hey guys, remember when we were 80 and Ulduar was super awesome hard and fun"
"Yea!"
"Let's go back and do it again, it was fun"
.....
Boss dies in 30 seconds thanks to gear inflation.
Congratz, wasted content, wasted money. Sure it was effective when it was released, but now it just kinda taking up space unless you want gear or achievements but it is significantly easy to get now.

I'm not sure what you're saying with this. If you were scaled down so that the content (Ulduar) became challenging (and thus fun) again.

Retired Holy PriestAs a rule, I try to act on the internet as I would in real life. If I have offended you, feel free to point it out. Unless I meant to offend you, I will probably apologize.

Also: No one's said that WoW design is optimal. I could easily conjure up a number of things I would change with the way WoW handles endgame, rewards, gear, and so forth. So simply because WoW isn't what we're all aiming for in the end, that doesn't mean the basic idea of progression through gear and hard work is bad.

Old bosses could be phased out to the people who killed them for a certain amount of times/time and be replaced with insanely difficult encounters that barely anyone could beat. Point is, WoW shouldn't be the example for the good way of doing it.

Yeah, comparing gear to character levels to make a point doesn't really work.

Using your Ulduar example:

At patch release: 'yaay finally, it took us 5 weeks to kill this boss but we finally did it yaay!'

Half a year later: 'Hey lets go back and do that boss again, we have been raiding after we killed it thus its easier now!'

Gaining power is not a bad thing, it rewards you for doing something right since it gets easier every next time you do it.
Once people have the gearset they think looks the best they are still inclined to not run that instance anymore since they have no need for the drops there correct?
How is that any different from people not raiding an instance they have no need for anymore in WoW?
'yeah but it can be fun!!'
So can doing the same thing in WoW so 'fun' isnt an argument for either.

It all boils down to: Progressing your character vs just improving the looks on your character without gaining strength.
We know the first one works, the second, well we can only assume.

Edgecrusher and Mif, perhaps you haven't explained it well enough in a way that actually convinces people, then? There is no need to sound condescending towards me because I'm not as familiar with GW2 or sold on it, yet.

I don't mean to be rude, I just have a tooth that's in 3 parts at the moment and to say the pain is excruciating is an understatement.

How is it not true? Your character is inseparable from your gear, otherwise what is the point of even wearing gear. I get the idea of mastering a profession, but with 6(?) active skills this seems relatively straightforward, wouldn't you agree? Besides, guides for rotations and such will obviously start appearing after a while. I spend time learning my classes in WoW as well,

Watching your stats go higher is not improving your character, it is improving your stats. There are not 6 active skills, you can switch between 10 + 5. If you are an elementalist you can switch between 20 + 5. And the skills are not straightforward, the combat system and their effects make it become "ok when do I need to use this skill" instead of wow having "Ok just use this this and this in this order", there is no rotation, moves are situational.

but I did so while performing tasks that felt meaningful to my character, i.e. improving gear, unlocking story, earning titles and achivements or simply ePeen. If anything, I would say appearance alone gives you a false sense of accomplishment--how could they not, they are only pixels--while watching your character gradually improve to become better in relation to the game world and the player community around you really reflects your hard work.

I don't understand this post, there are titles to be earned, there are achievements, there are storys to unlock there are EPeen things, the only thing thats differnt is stats which you don't need in the first place.

No, I worry that GW2 won't hand me gear at all. Obviously it will, but like you say all gear appear to be the same, looks apart. Imagine WoW with only transmogrification and no stats, what a disaster.

Because WoW wasn't build for no stats, you can just remove stats from WoW now and say yup its ready, it was built around stat inflating and gear progressing. GW2 will hand you gear the exact same way, with a challenge (although WoW really is not challenging) .

Dynamic events also seem very exciting. I remember Halaa in Nagrand, and what fun it was to fight over its ownership.
Boss fights I'll stay undecided on until it's been thoroughly put to the test after release. It could be an awesome innovation which allows for both group work and a sense of individual accomplishment, or it could end up the lamest thing in the world where, as long as a few people are assigned to click this and that, everyone else can just zerg without thought or skill.

The Zerg thing only works because of stat inflating, you can't just bypass mechanics in GW2 thanks to stats, because there are none... you have to do the mechanic or you will fail, you can't out dps a boss mechanics in GW2 like you can in WoW.

I'm not sure what you're saying with this. If you were scaled down so that the content (Ulduar) became challenging (and thus fun) again.

My point is WoW does not scale down like GW2.

It all boils down to: Progressing your character vs just improving the looks on your character without gaining strength.
We know the first one works, the second, well we can only assume.

Why does gear inflation have to be progressing your character? Why does gear looks have to be progressing your character?

Its not.

Gaining power is not a bad thing, it rewards you for doing something right since it gets easier every next time you do it.

You don't need to gain power just to make the encounter easier, the more you do the encounter the easier it will become. However what gear does is it just makes every ecounter wtffacepalmzergbossignoremechanics, which is not fun to most people who actual did the content when it was hard.

Watching your stats go higher is not improving your character, it is improving your stats. There are not 6 active skills, you can switch between 10 + 5. If you are an elementalist you can switch between 20 + 5. And the skills are not straightforward, the combat system and their effects make it become "ok when do I need to use this skill" instead of wow having "Ok just use this this and this in this order", there is no rotation, moves are situational.

But you only use 6 at the time, am I right? This basically means that you only really need 6 skills at any given time in order to do everything you want your character to do, the rest is just for specialization and flavour, or? What this boils down to is press skill button 1 to deal heavy damage, press skill button 2 to deal DoT, press skill button 3 to heal yourself, etc. Not very challenging, and not something that needs to be mastered really.

Again, I go by what I've heard/read, please correct me if I'm wrong about these mechanics.

Originally Posted by zito

I don't understand this post, there are titles to be earned, there are achievements, there are storys to unlock there are EPeen things, the only thing thats differnt is stats which you don't need in the first place.

I know, but you get these things while fighting bosses and raiding in WoW, mainly. Raiding becomes the common factor here, which provides the fun challenge, while the rewards are the incitements. I guess I should mention that I put most emphasis on gear, out of these examples.

Originally Posted by zito

Because WoW wasn't build for no stats, you can just remove stats from WoW now and say yup its ready, it was built around stat inflating and gear progressing. GW2 will hand you gear the exact same way, with a challenge (although WoW really is not challenging) .

But what is the point of gear, or of anything, if we have no stats? They could just hand you a hand grenade, point out the boss on the map, and instruct you to click 1-2-3-4 in a certain order. Or better yet, not have a challenge-based MMO at all, and instead do Second Life with pretty clothing.

Stat-based gear in WoW (and 99% of all successful RPGs and MMOs) is one of the crucial keys to set your character apart from others, and add an element which you need to master to get better. Getting gear, and using it properly (i.e. getting the optimal gear, gemming and enchanting, and generally optimizing your gear).

Originally Posted by zito

The Zerg thing only works because of stat inflating, you can't just bypass mechanics in GW2 thanks to stats, because there are none... you have to do the mechanic or you will fail, you can't out dps a boss mechanics in GW2 like you can in WoW.

Well I just told you how zerging (might) become the norm in GW2. As long as you have a few people assigned to the crucial mechanics, like firing the harpoon or whatever, then everyone else seem to be able to zerg as there is no holy trinity.

Why does gear inflation have to be progressing your character? Why does gear looks have to be progressing your character?

Its not.

Stop calling it inflation, really.
Encounters are designed for a bare minimum of health/dps etc requirements.
You make it sound that everything in wow is equally hard at maxlevel and then people start gathering gear and blow every raid away.
It does not work like that and you know it.

You don't need to gain power just to make the encounter easier, the more you do the encounter the easier it will become. However what gear does is it just makes every ecounter wtffacepalmzergbossignoremechanics, which is not fun to most people who actual did the content when it was hard.

Old raids are old.
No-one cares.
Old expansion raids really no-one cares about.
WoW may have its problems but so does your system.

Lets say you have an extremely skilled group thats capable of figuring out any fight within 10 tries.
Since gear and stats are a non-issue that same group will then be able to kill the boss every time.
Correct?
Apart from statless gear just for looks, why would they bother to keep killing the boss after the third time?
And then the next patch comes along, and well damage cant be higher since gear didnt change at all thus its just a matter of figuring out where to stand etc and you can do it. Sounds rather dull tbh.

I'm trying to understand... and at the risk of being called someone "on the WoW gear treadmill", I have to admit, it's not ALL that bad being in a Skinner Box of sorts. And when I say all bad, I mean there are definitely some negative aspects to this system, but some are nice.

I want to use my Sporregar rep grind as an example. I spent about 2 weeks on and off with a 60% flyer going back and forth over and over again to grind my rep with this faction. Want to know what I got when I was finally done? A tabard and a mini-pet. Neither of which I use in any serious manner. However, I enjoy busting them out from time to time when I get in to a little "mine is bigger than yours!" battle with some good friends or guildies of mine. I don't necessarily like the whole gear progression system in WoW because it has turned in to a "Link achievement" system; this, in turn, means that if you haven't done it, you won't do it. But having nice little rewards that don't really affect the game are nice! And I know, I know "well doing dungeons, or crafting, or even PvP will give you different looking armors!". Well that's the thing that gets me... everyone has the ability and general will-power to tank through some instances a couple of times to build themselves a cool armor set. But for spending a lot of time getting something that's silly looking, not-so-cool to anyone but you, and something that you're just proud to get that has a form of sentiment behind it (could just be because not many people took the time to actually farm the damned thing) it's just cool to have.

I'm trying to find a way to argue this case without saying "I'm a fan of Skinner Boxes even when I know I'm in one" but it's NOT an easy feat. I'm not a fan of total Skinner Boxes, but for getting little rewards for big accomplishments doesn't seem like much to ask for.

But you only use 6 at the time, am I right? This basically means that you only really need 6 skills at any given time in order to do everything you want your character to do, the rest is just for specialization and flavour, or? What this boils down to is press skill button 1 to deal heavy damage, press skill button 2 to deal DoT, press skill button 3 to heal yourself, etc. Not very challenging, and not something that needs to be mastered really.

No, you can swtich between your 10 skills (or more depending on class) in less then a second and use those. Like I said before all skills are situational, there isn't a skill button 1 for heavy damage, skill button 2 for a dot. You should research more accurately. Although skill button 6 is always a heal.

I know, but you get these things while fighting bosses and raiding in WoW, mainly. Raiding becomes the common factor here, which provides the fun challenge, while the rewards are the incitements. I guess I should mention that I put most emphasis on gear, out of these examples.

I still don't understand what you are saying, you are implying that without "raids" you can't fight fun and exciting bosses. However there are fun and exciting bosses in GW2 just not in traditional raids.

But what is the point of gear, or of anything, if we have no stats? They could just hand you a hand grenade, point out the boss on the map, and instruct you to click 1-2-3-4 in a certain order. Or better yet, not have a challenge-based MMO at all, and instead do Second Life with pretty clothing.

Thats what GW2 is about really, gear is only for looks. GW2 is about using your skills to react to certain mechanics rather then just pressing them for dps.

Stat-based gear in WoW (and 99% of all successful RPGs and MMOs) is one of the crucial keys to set your character apart from others, and add an element which you need to master to get better. Getting gear, and using it properly (i.e. getting the optimal gear, gemming and enchanting, and generally optimizing your gear).

No it isn't, if WoW was designed around not having stats it would be just as successful.

All you have to do is read one paragraph that says, gem for this, enchant for that. That is not skill, that isn't progressing and it only makes you do higher output not increasing your skill level.

Well I just told you how zerging (might) become the norm in GW2. As long as you have a few people assigned to the crucial mechanics, like firing the harpoon or whatever, then everyone else seem to be able to zerg as there is no holy trinity.

Guess what there isn't, and why would Anet design a boss that would? Why would anyone? Don't "assume" stuff.

---------- Post added 2012-01-01 at 07:55 PM ----------

Its not.

Stop calling it inflation, really.
Encounters are designed for a bare minimum of health/dps etc requirements.
You make it sound that everything in wow is equally hard at maxlevel and then people start gathering gear and blow every raid away.
It does not work like that and you know it.

Um it does, you get better gear, encounters become significantly easier. That's how it works right now.

Old raids are old.
No-one cares.
Old expansion raids really no-one cares about.
WoW may have its problems but so does your system.

To bad people still do care, people miss old raids and wish they could do them with the same epic feel. If everything scaled the same you could do your old content with the same challenge.

Lets say you have an extremely skilled group thats capable of figuring out any fight within 10 tries.
Since gear and stats are a non-issue that same group will then be able to kill the boss every time.
Correct?
Apart from statless gear just for looks, why would they bother to keep killing the boss after the third time?
And then the next patch comes along, and well damage cant be higher since gear didnt change at all thus its just a matter of figuring out where to stand etc and you can do it. Sounds rather dull tbh.

Kill the boss every time? That is an overstatement, its true that once you practice the fight it will become easier but if you fuck up you probably die and won't kill the boss. However if you outgear it, you can easily fuck up not even come close to dying and still down it no problems because it was designed for a lower level.

You keep killing the bosses because IT IS FUN YOU PLAY THIS GAME FOR FUN. You want to do the encounter over and over again on equal level because its fun, zerging a boss because you outgear it in less then 20 seconds is not fun. You also don't have to do a boss over and over again, you can come back to it after you do something else.

If you cant handle the facts oh well, move, go on this game is not for you.

The problem with this whole deal is that people already have the mentality burned into their brains that in order to be "better" you have to have stronger gear, therefore bolstering your characters strength.

Guild Wars is completely knocking that off the high horse and throwing it off a cliff. This game is meant for fun. You make your own carrot in these games.
So until that way of thinking is broken this question will continue to rise again and again.

"It's not enough to live, you have to have something worth living for."

Most people actually elude a very important point. Guild Wars has to be profitable.

Starting from the begining, as I noted in another thread, you sadly always have that majority of people on forums saying "damn I play for FUN, it's a game!" and when you are actually ingame you end up noticing that 95% of the population prefers to do most of the things as fast as possible, as easily as possible and as efficiently as possible. Whenever they can take off the skill factor, they go for it.

And you also have the great wave of those people already convinced that a game nowhere close to release is already so much better than anything else. Seeing your signature, I believe you are among them zito. Unfortunately you also have the opposite, people condemning the game at first sight.

As sad as it can be, you have to understand that a game has to be profitable. The one big problem wow faced along the years was that they develop content and put a lot of ressources into it for only a very small part of the game population to experience it. It was like 1% of the players could actually see the raids, either because it was too time consuming, or because it was too hard (yes indeed).

No matter how badly you see gear, you cannot dismiss the argument that it actually cope for your lack of skill. Gear clearly helps you killing bosses. And even tho this system has been in place for a long time, they still didn't have a lot of people actually doing raids on wow.

Now you think that without gear progression, only skill will matter. You don't seem to have a damn clue about how big the difference between a commited/skilled player and a casual can be. How in hell do you want them to design content according to skill, and let it that way for 2 years? (following your Ulduar argument, yes it was 2 years ago).

Those casual/average players will simply never ever be able to experience the content that actually costed a lot of ressources to make. First because you don't allow their character to become stronger, second because you are supposed to make content hard and skill needed.

What about: what the hell will they sell in their store? Gear doesn't matter, levels don't matter, Cosmetic is the only reward so the only progression you have. You can't sell boosts, because nothing matters, you can't sell Champions like in BLC or LOL, you can't sell Cosmestics because it's the only progression you have. They probably have a strong business plan, I believe.

But they will have to make a lot of money to actually have a decent developpement team working on updating content that actually a very small part of the player base will see, because it's too hard or too time consuming.

Gear has disadvantages such as inflation, I do agree. But it has strong advantages such as making the content easier to do for people that actually need it.

Please don't be in a total black and white configuration. It doesn't mean that you have either people that don't need gear either people that need FULL gear. You obviously have a linear effect in the entire player base.

And if you think GW2 should ignore wow basic player needs and aspirations, you are damn wrong and the game will just fail, sadly. But i believe it will not, and you will see if they learned from other failures pretty fast in the OB or shortly after release.